Proteas batsman Hashim Amla has been rested from the squad for the third ODI against Zimbabwe taking place in Bulawayo on Thursday. Amla has been given leave due to a busy workload, and will head back to South Africa for a few days, before returning for the triangular series, also involving Australia, starting in Harare next week.

Amla’s absence will give the Proteas’ management an opportunity to rotate the squad, with Rilee Rossouw, Mthokozisi Shezi and Marchant de Lange yet to receive game time in the series.

Captain AB de Villiers, was impressed with the batting depth shown by the lower order in Tuesday’s series-winning performance, and says the new faces coming in have a lot to play for.

‘It wasn’t a bad batting performance considering that our top order didn’t score a lot of runs,’ De Villiers said after the match. ‘The fact that Parney [Wayne Parnell] and some of the middle order and tail chipped in a lot was pleasing to me; its shows that there is a lot of depth in the batting order.

‘There will possibly be two or three changes,’ De Villiers said of Thursday’s match. ‘The most important one to mention is Hashim. He has played a lot of cricket and scored a lot of runs, so it will be a good opportunity for him to take some time off for one game and get him back here for the tri-series nice and fresh.

‘They have played a lot of cricket of late and they are all in decent form,’ he said of the reserves. ‘I don’t want to put too much pressure on them, I want to free them up and allow them to express their talent if they get an opportunity. There are still rankings at stake, so as a team we would like to win even though we might make a few changes.’

The third ODI starts at 9:30am on Thursday morning. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for regular scores and updates.

Photo: Anne Laing/HSM Images